Neither Baldwin nor Thompson made her sexual orientation an issue in the campaign. But as Baldwin, a seven-term congresswoman, told The Guardian recently:

“If you are not in the room, the conversation is about you,” she said. “If you are in the room, the conversation is with you. We never had an openly LGBT member of the U.S. Senate, and even though there are strong pro-equality allies who serve there, it has always been a conversation about a group of people. So this changes everything.”

As for the same-sex marriage measures on the ballot in Maryland, Maine and Washington state, they’re so close that the results may not be known tonight.